Blood, Death, Grief and Pain
by Waldo
Summary: Everyone has a breaking point. Even Malcolm Reed.


**Title**: Blood, Death, Grief and Pain  
**Author**: Waldo.  
**Pairing**: Archer/Reed  
**Rating**: R for violence  
**Summary**: Everyone has a breaking point.  
**Notes**: The title comes from a line in the song I vided to recently. The vid can be found at http/ The idea came from a quick mental image I had in the shower the other night. Thanks to the betas….

**Blood, Death, Grief and Pain**

**By Waldo.**

"It's all over," Archer whispered as he reached for even more of the antiseptic smelling medical shampoo. "You did the best you could." He rubbed the shampoo between his hands before reaching up to wash Malcolm's hair a third time.

After the blast, it had taken Trip another three minutes to jimmy open the armory door. Whatever had caused the marine inside to lose it; it hadn't affected his ability to override the command codes. Archer bounced on his toes as he waited, sure that he'd find Malcolm and the MACO both dead inside. T'Pol had commed to say that the explosion had taken the internal sensors offline, as they were housed in the armory, so she had no idea if anyone remained alive or not.

Phlox stood by, too, as they hoped against the odds.

"Got it!" Trip cried triumphantly, his mind on the job at hand, determinedly not on what they'd find inside.

Archer took a deep breath before facing the room, regretting it as the smell of charred flesh and blood assaulted him. He coughed twice, cursed the damn Expanse three times and stepped in, waving Trip and Phlox back. There was no point in anyone seeing the results of a bomb in close quarters if it was unnecessary.

The charring was extensive. There were two panels that were completely shattered and the phase pistol locker was peppered with dents. Several other monitors were completely blank and sparks shot out of one computer bank.

It was all Archer could do not vomit then and there when he saw the blood spattered across the wall and consoles. What was worse was the piece of scalp and dark hair wedged against a torpedo and it's rack. He kicked something as he took another step in. He looked down and found a boot with the foot and ankle still inside it. He stepped away from the boot and turned his attention the rack on his right. Four torpedos lay, undamaged, in their berths. Archer had to wonder how the torpedoes had not been detonated in the blast.

It was only when his eyes traced down the torpedo rack that he saw the figure huddled on the floor. "Malcolm!"

Malcolm looked up from his duck-and-cover position near the rack. "Yes, sir?" he answered quietly.

"My god," Archer nearly slipped on the gory floor as he rushed to his side. Malcolm was covered in blood and Archer didn't want to think about what was sticking out of a small cut in Malcolm's shoulder. It looked like… but it couldn't be bone. He fervently wished it to be true. That would be excessively gruesome. That was when he realized that there was no way it could have been one of Malcolm's, anyway. His uniform was in far too good condition for him to have suffered that extensive an injury. "Are you hurt?"

Malcolm smiled sickly and shook his head. Archer could hear the shock in his voice when he said calmly. "No. I shouldn't think so. Well, perhaps a bruise from when the blast knocked me backwards into the wall here." Malcolm tapped the wall nearest the torpedo rack that formed the corner he was crouched in.

"What happened?" Archer wanted to reach out and comfort him, but he couldn't find a clean patch of skin or uniform.

"The bloody idiot..." he trailed off, looking at his hands and arms, "There's irony for you 'bloody idiot'..." He shook his head to clear it, but the vacant, glassy look didn't leave his eyes. "Anyway...he built a shaped charge and strapped it to his chest. Only he had it the wrong way around. Instead of the blast going out from his chest..."

Archer grimaced and searched for words, but had no idea what to say to a man who'd just witnessed another person literally blow himself to pieces. Pieces that had landed all over him.

"I was lucky to be in front of him. I wanted to see if I could talk him into defusing the device. He had a deadman's switch, so I couldn't take any proactive steps," Malcolm continued in the same calm, detached - shocky - voice. He straightened a little and noticed the two shattered screens. "Yes, I suppose that would have been directly behind him...directly in line with the charge..."

Malcolm's tactical sense seemed to be functioning even through his haze. He noticed the charring on the walls, the pieces of equipment that had been shattered by the blast and which were covered with - "Oh god," was all he said before leaning over again and throwing up on the floor.

Heedless of the blood now, Archer reached forward, one hand around Malcolm's rebelling stomach, the other holding up his head. "Shh, shh... Let's get you to sickbay. I'll help you clean up in the shower there, okay?"

Their developing relationship had, thus far, been kept a secret, but there was no way in hell he was going to leave Malcolm alone in this state, and he couldn't see himself handing him over to Phlox or one of his medics either. One of the more depressing facts of the matter was that the ship wasn't in any danger anymore; he could stop and take the time to do this. Archer sighed and rubbed one hand across his forehead, smearing himself with blood he hadn't realized was there. He tried to rub it off on his sleeve and then realized that if he felt like that after only a small smear, Malcolm must... "Come on. Can you stand?"

Malcolm nodded and let Archer drew him up by his elbows. Archer pulled him in close, one arm around his shoulders, the other holding his opposite hand, trying to give him some support.

They slowly made their way to the door and found Trip and Phlox staring at them. "Good God," Trip whispered, too stunned by Malcolm's appearance to move.

Phlox moved to Malcolm's other side, but when he tried to put an arm around Malcolm, Malcolm jerked away.

Archer waved him back. "I'm going to walk him down to sickbay and help him with a shower, and by then he should be ready for you to examine him."

"But Captain...if he's bleeding this profusely -"

"It isn't his," Archer cut Phlox off harshly, wanting to get Malcolm cleaned up as soon as possible. He saw Trip paling behind him as the engineer's curiosity kicked him in the ass when he just **had **to look into the armory. "Doctor, I'll alert you if there's anything that looks like it can't wait, I promise. But I don't even know what you'd do with him before he gets cleaned up. You two probably want to get a biohazard team together to clean up in there. Trip, if you could get me a rough estimate of repairs when the biohazard team gets through?"

"Of course," Phlox agreed. Trip just nodded, looking ashen and as if he were just barely holding himself from either crying or throwing up.

Archer steered Malcolm down the hall, past several curious onlookers and didn't stop until he could deposit Malcolm on the bench in the large Sickbay shower room. Moving slowly and telegraphing his motions, Archer helped Malcolm strip down and then did the same himself. He felt bile rise as he saw the farmer's sunburn look of the red all over Malcolm's face and hands, his naturally pale skin even whiter than normal, straight even lines marking the division between covered and uncovered skin.

He took a cloth from the stack near the bench and rinsed it in the sink. "Close your eyes," he whispered. He quickly wiped the worst of the debris off Malcolm's face, making sure the areas around his mouth and eyes were completely clean. The bone fragment turned out to be barely lodged in the skin, and had fallen out when Archer had started to undo Malcolm's jumpsuit. The resultant cut was small and likely wouldn't even scar. There were several large bruises along Malcolm's back though, where he'd obviously impacted with the wall.

Archer grabbed a bottle of antiseptic shampoo and a bottle of body wash and reached over to turn on the shower. Once it had warmed up, he led Malcolm to stand in the center of the spray. Nozzles from the ceiling and three of the walls went to work rinsing the blood and gore off the shaken armory officer. When the water rushing towards the drain was more clear than red, Archer tipped Malcolm's head back into the spray, using his hands to scrub out the worst of it. The water in the drain ran red again for a few seconds.

Malcolm had closed his eyes and Archer wasn't sure if it was to keep the water out or to keep the tears in. "It's over now. Everyone's safe," Jonathan crooned as he grabbed the shampoo and poured a handful out. "Turn," he instructed quietly, even as he used his free hand to gently steer the other man around, ready to catch him should he slip on the wet floor.

Malcolm did as he was told, leaning his head back so Jonathan could use the small plastic brush to scrub his hair and scalp clean. He let the water pound on his face, the warm cleaning left in its wake slowly lulling him out of his dazed state. Part of him wanted to crawl right back into it. The reality of what happened was awful enough, but now it occurred to him that in the Expanse, no one was truly safe. "No," he whispered, not realizing how long it had been since he'd spoken last. His throat was dry and for some reason he didn't feel that it would be appropriate to swallow the water out of the shower taps. He coughed slightly. "No one is safe here. I think we can see that now. Jon..." he looked into his lover's eyes for the first time since the explosion. "If I hadn't been able to lock him in the armory...he was...he said he was going to the engine room. I'll have to run some tests to see if he could have actually damaged the reactor...but other people would have been hurt."

Jonathon rinsed the shampoo off his hands and stroked Malcolm's cheek. "Someone else was hurt." It bothered him that Malcolm never counted himself in the wounded or affected category after any kind of incident. "But, fortunately, thanks to some very quick thinking, no one else was. Trip and I were wondering how a MACO had managed to override the command codes."

"I locked the armory door from the inside. With all the ordinance in there, the room is triple reinforced in case anything should set off a torpedo, or if a phase pistol should overload. It also gives me a place...to defuse bombs and keep the ship safe if things go...badly."

Archer nodded. He knew all that, of course, but he figured that it was probably good to keep Malcolm talking.

He grabbed the shampoo again and started the routine for a second time, using his fingers to massage as he cleaned. He noticed Malcolm's eyes drift shut as he worked, noticed as Malcolm took several deep breaths as if steeling himself for something.

"I think there was a small part of him that didn't want to drop that switch. He had a phase pistol in his other hand. He could have kept me from getting to that lock. But even as I inched towards it, he never said anything, never threatened to shoot me."

Archer stopped his work for a minute and pulled Malcolm in close. "I'm glad. I was terrified that we were going to get the door open and I was going to discover that I'd lost you."

"I've never had three seconds of my life go so slowly. It can't have been any more than that between the time I saw him drop the switch and the time the blast went off. Yet every nanosecond is engraved on my brain. I was fairly certain I was going to die. And yet the only two thoughts I had were, 'this is an incredibly stupid way to go - one of our own guys affected by nothing more than space' and the other was that I wished I could have said good-bye to you."

He finally broke, leaning into Jonathan's chest and letting the tears mix with the cascading water and letting the sobs take over. "I was so sure I'd never see you again." He clung as tightly as wet skin on wet skin would allow.

"It's all over," Archer whispered as he reached for even more of the antiseptic smelling medical shampoo. "You did the best you could." He rubbed the shampoo between his hands before reaching up to wash Malcolm's hair a third time.

Later that night, with Malcolm wrapped up in his sweats and his blankets, Archer watched his lover sleep. He supposed that a year ago, they might not have kept their relationship so secret. With only eighty-one humans on board, things like that never stayed low-key for very long anyway. But now with the marines on board… Malcolm was coming up at odds with them enough as it was. He didn't need anyone starting rumors or making insinuations.

The downside was that they had become so covetous of their secret, that they almost hid their feelings from themselves. Archer found himself surprised that what Malcolm had believed to have been his last thoughts would have been for him. He hadn't realized that their relationship was that important to the younger man.

And that night, as he'd led him out of sickbay – Malcolm leaning on him much the same way he had on the way in, thanks to Phlox's sedative – he'd decided to be a little more demonstrative and a little less cautious and hope that Malcolm followed suit. It shouldn't have surprised him that Malcolm loved him as much as he did.

And then it hit him solidly in the gut: Malcolm had been right when he'd said that no one was safe in the Expanse. Jon pulled the blankets a little further up around Malcolm's shoulders and gently caressed the sleeping man's hair. He wanted nothing more than to lay down with him and just be close, but he had a letter to write. He could have foisted the thing off on Hayes, but as Captain of the vessel, he was the one ultimately responsible for the fate of any aboard her. He leaned down and kissed Malcolm's temple before moving to the computer. He opened a file and began to type, "It is with sincere sympathy that I write to inform you…"

Archer woke up with a start. He'd been dreaming. Vividly. He'd been writing One of Those Letters. Only this time it was to Mary and Steward Reed. He caught his breath and then stumbled to the bathroom. He rinsed off his face and then filled a glass with water. He moved to the doorway and let the light from the bathroom spill out so that he could watch his lover sleep. Even sedated, Malcolm had rolled over in his sleep, one hand seeking the missing warmth. Archer drained his glass and set it back on the sink.

He turned off the light and crawled back into bed, wrapping Malcolm in his arms. Blood, death, grief and pain seemed to be the mainstays of their mission lately. But for tonight – and for as many nights as he could – he'd have Malcolm. And love.


End file.
